FTC website experiencing "technical problems"

At least one federal goverment website remained inaccessible Tuesday, prompting speculation on the internet that these agencies were being pummeled with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

The Federal Trade Commission's site was knocked offline much of Monday, then briefly returned Tuesday before going down once again. The site was operational as of 6 p.m. EST Tuesday.

Other government sites, including the Department of Treasury, reportedly were having stability problems as well.

Spokesman Peter Kaplan said the FTC would not address reports on the possibility that the takedown was hacker-induced.

"Our website was down [Monday], and we had technical problems," he told SCMagazineUS.com on Tuesday. "But as far as other reports go, we haven't commented on that. All I know is we were down [Monday]. I thought it had all been resolved."

It would surprise no one if the FTC drew the ire of cybercriminals, considering the agency serves as the clearinghouse for identity theft claims and often investigates spammers, malware purveyors and rogue internet service providers.

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